"What about you?"
"What about me?" Thomas asked with confusion.
"Well, you said you were raised by your aunt alongside Lissianna; I presume you had to deal with your uncle, too. Didn't he make you miserable as well?"
"Oh." Thomas waved that away as unimportant. "He wasn't so bad with me. Besides, I didn't have to put up with him for long. I moved out at nineteen."
"Lissianna could have, too," Greg pointed out, but Thomas shook his head.
"No. Jean Claude expected her to live at home until she married."
"She could have rebelled," he suggested, bringing an incredulous look from Thomas.
"You didn't rebel against Jean Claude," Thomas informed him solemnly. "Besides, Lissi would never have left Aunt Marguerite on her own to deal with him. Jean Claude's mind was really twisted by the end. He was pretty scary."
"He's dead then," Greg murmured. "How did he die?"
"A fire. He partook of too much... er... alcohol and fell asleep with a cigarette in his hand. It started a fire, and he perished in it."
Greg nodded.
"Anyway..." Thomas began to pace again. "That was the best thing he ever did for Aunt Marguerite and Lissi, but it put Lissi in a panic. She suddenly started worrying about what if Marguerite died? Who would feed her? So, she decided she had to be more independent. She started working at the shelter, and now she's moved out and is trying to feed herself, but Aunt Marguerite is worried, and so are the rest of us."
"About what?" Greg asked with interest. It sounded to him like her father's death had set Lissianna free to embark on adulthood. She was like a bird taking its first flight.
"That she'll turn out like Jean Claude."
"Her father the alcoholic?" Greg asked with confusion. "Is she drinking?"
"No, at least not on purpose," Thomas said slowly. "But it's her phobia."
Greg shook his head. Somewhere he'd lost the thread of the conversation. Before he could ask for clarification, Thomas stiffened, his head cocking toward the door.
"I have to go; Aunt Marguerite's coming." He walked to the door, then paused to say, "I know you don't understand, but I haven't time now. Aunt Marguerite will no doubt explain everything in the morning. When she does, just try to remember that none of this is Lissianna's fault. She didn't bring you here, but she does need your help."
On that note, he slipped silently out of the room. A moment later, Greg heard the murmur of voices in the hall, then silence, followed by the soft click of a door farther up the hall. It seemed everyone had gone back to bed.
Sighing, he let his head fall back on the pillow and stared up at the ceiling, his mind on what Thomas had told him. So the beautiful Lissianna hadn't had an easy life. Greg grimaced, thinking that few people did. Perhaps it was the natural pessimism that his profession tended to gamer, but after years of counseling the bro ken and abused, it seemed to him that few escaped youth unscarred.
He had a few scars himself. His mother had been warm and loving, and his sisters were great, as were his aunts and cousins and the rest of his extended family, but his own father hadn't been a winner. The man had been a philanderer with a violent temper. The best thing he'd done for his family was abandon it while Greg was still young, but it had left him to be the little man of the house. He'd grown up being told over and over that he was "the only good man out there." It was a lot of weight for a boy to bear, and probably part of the reason he was still sin-gle. He didn't want to go from being the "only good one out there" in his mother's and sisters' eyes, to one of the bad ones should he mess up.
Greg's thoughts came to an abrupt halt as the bedroom door opened again. Lifting his head, he peered at the woman entering, the brunette in the red baby doll. She eased the door cautiously closed, then released a pent-up breath of apparent relief at arriving in the room undiscovered. Turning from the door, she approached the bed.
"Oh good, you're awake," she whispered, pasting a bright smile to her lips.
Greg raised an eyebrow, wondering what was coming as she paused and settled herself on the edge of the bed to eye him pensively.
"Everyone thinks I've gone to the lavatory, but instead I snuck up here to see you," she explained, then added, "I'm Elspeth, and I wanted to talk to you about my cousin Lissianna."
"Ah." Greg nodded, doing his best not to gape at all the pale ivory flesh exposed by her skimpy nightwear. It would seem rude if he were to ogle her, he was sure.
"I gather Aunt Marguerite brought you here to treat Lissianna, but Lissi seems to think you'll be so annoyed at Aunt Marguerite's high-handed tactics, that you'll refuse to help her, and she really, really needs your help." Elspeth paused expectantly.
"I see," Greg murmured, to fill the silence, but when she continued to simply stare at him with quiet expectation, he asked, "What exactly is Lissianna's phobia?"
The brunette blinked in surprise. "You mean no one has told you?"
He shook his head.